Q3 Revenues at Party Poker Down Nearly $20 Million From Last Year

PartyGaming, which is the parent company of Party Poker, recently released an "interim management statement" for the third quarter of 2009.

The company had total revenues of $112.7 million dollars in Q3 2009, down $5 million dollars from the same time last year. This is fairly unremarkable.

However, when the company broke down their revenue numbers for Q3 2009, especially compared to the same period last year, a few things really jumped out at me.

First - $45.1 million in revenues were generated by Party Poker in Q3 2009, down nearly $20 million dollars from the same quarter last year ($65.0 million in Q3 2008).

This is quite an astonishing drop, to put it mildly.

The company blamed a few different factors on the drop, including "foreign exchange movements" and "competitive pressures".

Players sign-ups seem to be relatively strong, but it's the yield per player (for poker revenues) that are way down, leading to the precipitous drop in poker revenues.

The numbers seem to indicate that many people are taking advantage of the company's relatively new "Super Sign-up bonus", and then migrating back to Pokerstars and FTP once they have earned their bonus money.

The company is marketing their poker and casino products heavily right now, and it will be interesting to see whether player yields for their poker operations ramp up in the coming quarters.

Another thing that jumped out at me was the fact that PartyGaming earned more from their casino operations than their poker operations in Q3 2009.

Casino revenues totaled $49.2 million dollars in Q3 2009, a full $4+ million dollars more than what Party Poker generated.

Casino player yields are way up, while poker player yields are way down.

It will be interesting to see how Party Poker does in the months and quarters ahead..